Within hours of Floyd Mayweather reducing boxing’s most eagerly-anticipated showdown in ages to another one-man supershow of tireless dedication and meticulous accuracy, Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea did the exact same thing on the football pitch to the most-watched league in the world.
It matters not at all to everyone but the most ardent supporters of the Blues or of ‘The Money Team’ just how good you have to be to make it look so simple against the money of a Manchester United or City, or against the legendary skills of a certain Hall-of-Famer like Manny Pacquiao.
It matters not at all to everyone but the most ardent supporters of the Blues or of ‘The Money Team’ just how good you have to be to make it look so simple against the money of a Manchester United or City, or against the legendary skills of a certain Hall-of-Famer like Manny Pacquiao.
No – to them, Mayweather is a coward, running away from his opponent and ‘cheating’ his way to victory. To them, Chelsea are a bunch of thugs, spoiling every league fixture and preventing ‘the beautiful game’ from being expressed in its very purest form.
If you were to believe every word of the anti-Mourinho and anti-Mayweather camps, their successes today are actually a crime to the good name of sport.
You know, sport. That competitive pastime where victory is the key to glory, and showmanship is mere icing on the cake.
Of course, all this really shows is that the old adage is alive and well. If you can’t beat them, join them. And if you can’t join them without sounding like a complete and utter sycophant, discredit them. Discredit them every chance you get.
With the amount of money involved at the very highest level of sport these days – no doubt you have all seen the news reports of Mayweather’s staggering $120m Pacquiao payday, and of the £5billion feeding trough the Premier League has become – it’s easy to forget that at the very root of each lies a very simple contest.
Hit, and avoid being hit. Do that and you either break your opponent down or win the favour of the all-important judges. Similarly, if you score goals and your opponents do not, you will win football matches.
These rules are known by all who participate, ahead of time. It’s so mind-numbingly simple, it’s amazing so many people are struggling to grasp it.
And yet, we know deep down there is no breakdown in communication here at all. 99% of those slating Mayweather’s fighting style or Mourinho’s tactics know how this works. They just don’t want it to be them.
Arsenal, one of Chelsea’s nearest rivals in the league, were one of the first sides to hear those infamous ‘boring, boring’ chants. They responded by defiantly singing ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ after their latest lockdown of a 90-minute tussle, using the gleam of their silverware to blind the haters in the process.
Then, when Arsene Wenger ushered in an era of dominant, flowing and extremely-attractive football, those who hated the dull George Graham successes weren’t giving the Gunners their due – no, instead they were on a moral crusade about all the diving, the bullying of officials, how the offside rule was seemingly tweaked in their favour.
Moral of the story? Everything, even the greatest of sporting achievements, has a negative side – and those who have achieved nothing will set out to urinate in the cornflakes of anyone who has achieved something.
That’s society for you.
There is another side of the anti-Mayweather and anti-Chelsea stance. One which carries a little more water at face value. Floyd Mayweather was convicted of domestic abuse. Chelsea captain John Terry was found guilty of racial abuse.
If it makes you feel better, assuming your criminal record is clean and your relationships with your friends and loved ones are spotless, then congratulations: you are officially a better human being than both Mayweather AND JT.
Yeah, they’re much more famous and successful than you are. But that’s not what matters in life, right? Success and wealth do not compare to integrity and health, correct?
But, sadly, we must not blur athletic achievement with moral compass here. Terry and Mayweather each took the punishment doled out to them by the system and went back to their quest for success. Our society dictates that those who are guilty must be integrated back into that society, once they have paid their debt to it in full.
And now, each man has bolstered their own respective legacy with yet another incredible achievement. The people who mocked Chelsea for going five years without a league title and Mayweather for going five years without fighting Manny Pacquiao are now making excuses about the way both happened.
We can all criticise Mourinho’s style, Chelsea’s style, Mayweather’s style and all of the baggage that comes with these stories until we’re blue in the face. But when it comes to the simple concept of competition – striving to do what you do better than the other guy – both are, in the words of Charlie Sheen, ‘winning’.
If putting in the work to match and surpass the achievements of a boxer unbeaten in 48 professional fights and a football team celebrating yet another domestic triumph was as simple as discrediting anything and everything about their glory from one’s soapbox, maybe Chelsea and Floyd would not have found this all to be such a walk in the park.
